


falling backwards, falling backwards

by rarmaster



Series: FtPverse [15]
Category: Kingdom Hearts, Super Mario Galaxy
Genre: Gen, content warning for a few vague references to suicidal ideation, post-death repliku is just like this, the doc title for this was ''good news once you step into self indulgent hell it doesn't stop''
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 06:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14302695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: The Riku Replica wakes up after what should have been death in a place he doesn't recognize, with no memory of how he got there or who he is.





	falling backwards, falling backwards

**Author's Note:**

> I love.... multiverse bullshit....... so here's how FtPverse could have started, had it been Rosalina instead of a rando OC, because the thought wouldn't leave my head and even though it can't ever be canon that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to write it for fun. 
> 
> I wish this Repliku luck on whatever path this timeline sets him on, tbh.

He blinked his eyes open, which brought him the sight of an endless dark sky and a billion stars, with shapes and gentle splashes of color on the edges of his vision. Buildings, he thought, but it was about then that the _pain_ registered to him, sharp and hot bleeding up his side and to his brain. Why did he _hurt_ so much?

Why did he feel like he should be dead?

A low groan tore from his throat as he tried to breathe around the pain, his vision blurring so much he had to screw his eyes shut again.

“He’s awake!”

“He’s awake!!”

—came a chorus of childlike voices, bright and high-toned.

Something slammed into his legs, then something of a similar size to his shoulders. He jerked at both touches, not sure what it was and not wanting to get hurt more.

Then the sensation of the world spinning overcame him. Like, _literally_ , as if he was suspended in the air, or perhaps falling wildly through it. He was too scared to open his eyes again and look. He curled up his knees even though _that hurt like hell,_ wanting to mitigate the damage to his vitals should he fall—

A pair of hands steadied him, which he wanted to recoil at. Then, a voice:

“Careful, careful! Didn’t I tell you he was hurt? You can’t be rough with him like with your siblings.”

It was stern in ways that made his skin crawl, but also gentle in ways he was wholly unused to. And as soon as he was steady again, the hands pulled away.

He opened his eyes to see who had spoken, because whoever that was was in charge of his life now, which made him… uneasy in ways he couldn’t quite place. All of his memories were fuzzy. He didn’t know how he got here. He didn’t really know who _he_ was.

But he opened his eyes to a face that was kind—kind in ways he barely grasped, in ways he’d only seen once before. (Brown hair and a smile that could move mountains, a well of kindness in blue eyes, a name on the tip of his tongue that he couldn’t quite remember.) The owner of the face seemed both old and young at the same time, her hair a familiar pale blonde, her blue eyes not as sad as they should be—

(But it was hard to say _why_ he thought they should be. He got the fleeting image of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perpetually sad girl, a girl his heart ached for, a girl he couldn’t quite remember, and that was it.)

The woman standing above him smiled gently when she saw she had his attention.

“I’m sorry, I’m doing my best to heal you, but I can’t say I’ve had much practice with anything this serious,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind…?”

He wet his lips, but wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t remember enough to say he had much of an opinion. Well… he could remember looking forward to death, but curiosity beat too strongly in him to say that now. He wanted to know why he was here. He wanted to know where ‘here’ was. It definitely wasn’t Castle Oblivion.

Castle Oblivion…? What was _that_?

The name brought unpleasant memories to him, boiling under the surface of his mind, so he stopped thinking about it and tried to push it away.

It wasn’t too hard, since he then noticed that there were many… creatures, floating around this woman. _Stars_ would probably be a better word, because that’s kind of what they looked like. A half dozen round and fat stars with cute little faces, each a different color. One of them was directly above him, surrounded in a blue glow that matched the color of its body. The blue glow seemed to cradle him, as well, keeping him suspended off the ground.

He had the thought that this should fill him with anxiety, but it was not nearly as claustrophobic as how his mind also told him it should be, so it wasn’t so bad. It was actually kind of neat. He wished he knew why he was supposed to have such strong connotations between floating and… bad things, though.

“What… happened to my memories?” he asked, his voice kind of like a croak. Perhaps he should have asked where he was, and what the woman’s name was, first. But this seemed more important.

He’d like to know why the sight of this woman filled him with so much dread. How bad could it be, _really_ , his brain wondered. But then his brain also told him he didn’t want to know.

(He did, though, and that would always be his curse. He’d want too desperately to understand who he was to leave the past alone.)

“It’s… hard to say,” the woman answered, after a moment. “I did nothing to them. But perhaps I did not save you soon enough for them to remain wholly intact. I don’t know enough about your kind to say whether near-death experiences are a cause for your memories to slip away.”

“My kind…?”

She smiled, sad, fond. “You’ll figure it out.”

He wasn’t sure how to feel about that, about the certainty her tone carried.

“Who… are you?” he asked, instead.

“My name is Rosalina,” she answered.

A name, but not much more. The star creatures floated anxiously around the two of them. He should ask where he was, what was going on, but the weight of the things he didn’t remember, did not know about himself, was much too heavy on his chest. He couldn’t even remember his name.

So:

“Who… am I?” he asked.

Somehow, her smile grew even fonder.

“You’ll figure that out, too.”

He scowled, and at it, she laughed.

“I wish I could tell you more,” she said. “But the more I tell you, the more I change. I’m not even sure that I’m supposed to be doing this in the first place…” Her eyes got a little distant, and she sighed to herself, resigned and laughing in equal measures. “But then, I suppose it happening at least once was inevitable, wasn’t it?”

He stared, not sure what to think. Did she know anything about him at all? What was it she was afraid of changing? What was she _doing_?

Besides healing him, of course. Healing him of wounds he couldn’t remember receiving.

(Well, he could, kind of, flashes of heat and sweat and a power in his veins his brain told him was _darkness_. But not the hows or the whys or the whos, just the ring of metal against metal, a fleeting remembrance of anger so thick he could get sick on it, and then nothing else.)

Those wounds… were starting to feel a little bit better, he realized. The pain ebbing away, slowly but persistently.

“What _are_ you doing?” he asked her, watching her carefully.

“Giving you a second chance,” was her response, her gaze still fixed on the stars. “It may not have been my place to, but…” She hesitated, then shook her head, turning back to him. “You deserve one,” is what she said, instead of whatever it was she wanted to say otherwise.

He sat up, which took a second or two of figuring out how exactly being suspended like this functioned. He was wobbly, but upright. That made him feel a little more comfortable than lying down.

“How exactly does this work?” he asked. “Do I get to stay here?”

Wherever here was, it looked warm and homey, a place that might be nice to stick around. And the stars… he wasn’t sure he could get sick of them.

But Rosalina shook her head.

“I’m going to send you to a place where you can start over, and live the life that was robbed from you,” she explained. “A universe different, but adjacent to your own.”

“I… okay.” This didn’t make much sense at all. “What do I do once I’m there?”

She shrugged and smiled, like the answer was simple. “You live,” she said.

The thought made him warm and anxious at the same time. He had no idea how to do that. Especially when he didn’t know who he was.

“What about my memories?” he asked, wanting to fill the gaping hole in his mind. “Will those come back, or are they gone forever?”

She hesitated.

“It’s… difficult to say. The way I went about things is very different than others have or will, but…” Her voice suddenly gained a distant, ethereal quality, a power in her words that shook his core. “I have seen many ways this may go. I have seen times where you have never remembered, and times where you have never forgotten. And I have seen many, many times where…”

She broke off, then muttered, as if to herself: “Well, it doesn’t matter.”

She turned to him, eyes burning like stars, determination set in her face. Her voice lost its otherworldly quality, but the weight of her passion for this—for _him,_ did she even know him!?—bowled him over completely.

“I don’t know what path I’m going to send you on, because it’s not up to me,” she said. “And inevitably you—or, a version of you—will live all of them. Just know that many of the paths I have seen are good. In many of them you end up happy, and loved. It is for that reason that I’m doing this. Because I have seen many futures, and I know many are good, and you deserve that.”

“O- Oh,” he said, not sure what else to say. The thought of it was baffling, for some reason. The idea that he could be loved. (Trying to understand why it was baffling made him feel sick and his head swim, and he didn’t want that right now, so for the moment he lay the effort to rest.)

Rosalina smiled at him. By now, the pain had left his bones completely. He got the sense that the star creature holding him up was starting to get a little tired, so he shifted so he could put his feet on the ground. The glow surrounding him vanished, and the sense of weightlessness left him. This mattered less to him than meeting Rosalina’s eyes and asking:

“Do… I have to go soon?”

She nodded, looking a little sad.

“Oh.” He found he was a little sad, too.

“But here, I have something to give you, first,” she said. She motioned towards one of her star friends, and they fluttered over to him, offering out a small blue pouch emblazoned with a soft yellow star. He held out his hand, and let the pouch fall into it.

It was so light he would have thought it empty, had it not had an obvious shape and substance to it. So he pulled back the mouth of it and peered inside, then shook out a few of whatever it contained into his other hand.

They were… small, candy-colored little pieces of… something. He wasn’t sure what.

“Star bits,” Rosalina explained.

“They taste yummy!!” one of her stars chimed in, and she laughed.

“That they do, but I would discourage you from eating more than a few,” she said, meeting his eyes. “I thought perhaps you might not want to forget me, forget this, so I wanted to give you something to remember me by. Maybe it was selfish…”

“No, thank you,” he said, the words a little awkward on his tongue. He carefully put the star bits back in the pouch, pulling at the drawstrings to close it again. “I really appreciate it.” It made him warm, but it also made his chest tighten.

(He couldn’t remember anything, but he still knew for certain he’d never been given a gift before.)

Rosalina smiled, then waved her hands. The sky around them blurred and then settled again, and when he looked out below them, below the castle at the top of which they stood, he saw a beach, dark waves beating against sand.

“This my stop?” he asked, so Rosalina wouldn’t have to say it.

She nodded again.

“How do I get down?”

She laughed, though it wasn’t as bright as some of her earlier laughs. She waved her hands again, and light like a bubble surrounded him, lifting him off the ground.

“Oh!” he said, surprised.

Rosalina smiled up at him, her eyes fond, but her smile tinged with sadness.

“You’ll do _great_ ,” she told him.

He decided to trust her.

“Thank you,” he said again.

And her light delivered him to the beach.

“Sora- Sora did you _see that_!?” came a voice from further along it. He turned his head in that direction, surprised, wondering who it was—though he couldn’t see in this darkness, from this distance.

He looked up again to Rosalina—

She was gone.

But he still clutched her pouch of star bits in his hands.

And her kindness was imprinted on his heart.

Somehow, he knew, she was still watching from the stars. He resolved to do her proud. That would be the best way to repay her, wouldn’t it?


End file.
